You're wrong, and you're a moron...

I'm completely ok with being wrong. It happens to me a lot, so it's hard for me to say with a straight face that I wouldn't accept somebody who apologizes after making a mistake. We will all be wrong from time to time. However, some people aren't willing to admit the mere possibility that they will ever be wrong.

In the media, this is known as a strength. The way to be popular as a sports host or a political host is not to be right, but to be boisterous and have strong opinions. Nobody's going to remember what you said two weeks ago, and even if they did, the call screeners are never going to allow them on the air. So if you said last year that the Detroit Lions were going to win the Super Bowl emphatically enough, you would get more listeners than somebody who passively picked the Steelers. Likewise, in politics, nobody is going to check up on you if you lie or stretch the truth about war, health, or who you've had sex with in the past 24 hours. (Actually, scratch that last one...)

In everyday life, however, this doesn't work as well. I have had friends who are 100% convinced of things, and not only are they right, but you're stupid for questioning them. This happens most often, to nobody's surprise, when it comes to politics and religion, two things that virtually never can be proven. If you say that the Lions are going to win the Super Bowl, they'll know you're wrong around...Week 9. But if they say that ________ is going to hell, how are you going to disprove that? If they say that if the President does this and then that and then that and every possible problem will be solved, chances are he's not going to do exactly what you want and you'll never know if it would have been successful.

When it comes to politics and religion, I feel that I'm humble enough to know that I don't have all the answers. I feel like I understand the concept of God pretty well, but do I understand everything? Of course not. My views are always changing. Politically, as well. I know the basics of what I think is right and what I think is wrong, but that doesn't mean I'm always right. I will state my opinions and you will state yours, but unless you say something racist or sexist or homophobic I'm not going to say anything against it. (Although, if you have really crazy views, I'll probably lose some respect for you...that's life and it's unavoidable.)

If you tell me you're right and I'm stupid, however, I'm not going to get a damn thing out of our conversation besides you being condescending. It's not going to help either of us. So if you can't have a civil conversation without being high and mighty, don't.

Glass Houses

Gloating is not my thing. I really don't like doing it, because we all fail, over and over again, and it's not fair to take pleasure in other people's misfortunes.

But there is one thing that I feel I can make an exception for. I have absolutely no respect for people who take a holier-than-thou approach to something, and it's hard not to feel good when it blows up in their face, even if you don't want to admit to it.

It is incredibly difficult not to feel some sort of perverse joys when the Larry Craig's of the world get caught in a homosexual relationship. When somebody makes a career out of attacking gays gets discovered...it's just desserts. Honestly, if he had been accepting of gay relationships and had been caught in a relationship like that, I would have felt bad for him as he was skewered on all the late night talk shows.

Now, onto the point of this blog...David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez being caught doing steroids. I love it. It's hard not to, since I'm heavily biased in this area. But it isn't the fact that they are being torn to shreds that made me happy--it's the Boston fanbase that constantly said how they were the team that did things right, gloating in the failures of others while an investigation done by one of their employees found no evidence of PED's on the team. (I know it's been said by others more eloquent than me, but George Mitchell looks really, really bad right now. Somehow he was able to find cancelled checks from a million people except the people he was trying to protect. Interesting.)

So it serves them right. I take no pleasure in seeing two guys anyone with common sense could see were on steroids being caught in the act. I do take pleasure in seeing people taking the "We did it fairly" defense are now saying "well everyone was doing it..." Nice try. It's true, but it's a little late to use it now.

Everyone did do steroids. Meaning, no, those titles are not tainted. Their steroided guys beat other teams full of steroids. We'll never know if a team with 17 guys on steroids beat one with 13, or vice versa. However, we will know that nobody is immune to it. If you have a team, your team has a lot of guys who did steroids in the past 15 years. Playing the innocence card isn't going to work anymore.